The fight over America’s public lands is lurching back to the national spotlight.

It’s happening in Las Vegas, where Nevada rancher Cliven Bundy, his sons Ryan and Ammon Bundy and compatriots will stand trial in federal court over their 2014 armed standoff with the U.S. Bureau of Land Management.

And it’s happening in Congress, where legislative proposals could upend who’s in charge of tens of millions of acres of federal land across the West.

The trial will force participants to relive the tense moments when federal agents and armed Bundy sympathizers narrowly averted a shootout after the BLM tried to seize the Bundys' cattle over unpaid grazing fees.

“Those kinds of protests are scary,” said Washington, D.C.- based conservation lobbyist Greg Schildwachter of the armed standoff. “They are scary for the people who are behind them and they are scary for the people who oppose them.”

And that tension will carry over into Congress, where conservationists, hunters, miners, energy developers, recreationists and rural communities are rallying behind the forces they believe will defend their version of the American West.

“It is sort of bringing out into the open these essential questions … am going to get what I want or is it going to be taken away from me,” Schildwachter said. “There are huge values at stake here.”

And the outcome is unpredictable — in court and Congress.

Ryan and Ammon Bundy and some sympathizers already beat charges in Oregon after an armed standoff at the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge. Their takeover ended after the FBI shot and killed an Arizona rancher who served as the Bundys' spokesman. The acquittal followed a trial many considered a slam dunk for prosecutors.

The Bundy disputes have roots in the decades-old public lands fight and some pro-transfer officials, mostly at the state and local levels, sympathized with the Bundy protestors' underlying complaints even as they denounced tactics. However, the idea of widespread transfers of federal land to state is anathema to a broad coalition of conservationists, hunters, anglers and recreation enthusiasts who fear state control would lead to reduced access through irresponsible development or outright sales of public land to private owners.

In Congress, it appears Republicans, who control both houses, may have a slam dunk of their own when it comes to forcing the widespread transfer of federal land to the states Western members have long sought.

But, like the Oregon prosecutors learned, the challenge might be tougher than it appears from the outside

Opponents saddle up to fight

In addition to traditional opposition from Democrats and conservationists, hunters and other recreation users are lining up to defend federal control.

“We don’t feel the solution is transferring land to the states,” said Gray Thornton, president and CEO of the Wild Sheep Foundation, a hunting group with about 12,000 members. “The taxpayers of the United States already own these lands.”

There are tough questions from taxpayers, including some conservatives, who point to evidence that shows taking on extensive new land holdings could plunge state budgets deep into debt.

The costs to fight fires, manage grazing, conduct environmental studies and battle invasive species and noxious weeds can add up fast, and many states’ budgets don’t have the cash to pay those bills.

“The state couldn’t afford the costs to suppress one wildfire,” said Greg Tanner, a retired wildlife biologist who attended a public meeting in Fallon, Nev., to learn about a proposed transfer bill by U.S. Rep. Mark Amodei, R-Nev. “The state doesn’t have the money, and it is a state where people don’t like to pay taxes anyway.”

Nationally, federal fire suppression costs have increased from about $240 million in 1985 to nearly $2 billion in 2016, a rate of increase exponentially greater than inflation. The initial rehabilitation bill for just one recent fire in Nevada, the Hot Pot fire that burned about 122,000 acres in July, is estimated at $5.1 million.

The political landscape across the West has also changed since the 1970s, when advocates for state control of the lands, particularly ranchers, began agitating for change through the Sagebrush Rebellion and similar movements.

Western populations have become more urbanized, leaving rural lawmakers sympathetic to ranching issues with less power at the state level.

“The ranchers are actually playing a rather risky game,” said Robert H. Nelson, a former Interior Department official and conservative scholar. “They might regret the day they ever advocated federal transfer.”

Growing stack of land transfer proposals

Although the 115th Session of Congress just began, there is already land transfer legislation in the queue and more in development.

It includes proposals for widespread transfers of federal land to states, proposals for the sale or transfer of specific land and proposals that would change the way the federal government assigns land designations or enforces the law.

Among the most sweeping proposals is one under development in Nevada. It’s a revival of the Honor the Nevada Enabling Act of 1864 Act, which Amodei introduced in 2015.

The bill, which had a hearing in the 114th Congress but no vote, calls for large-scale transfers in Nevada to be conducted in two phases.

The first phase would transfer about 7 million acres in a checkerboard pattern along Interstate 80 and the Humboldt River. Designated wilderness, conservation areas, national monuments, wildlife refuges, land managed by the defense and energy departments and American Indian reservation land would be exempt.

Subsequent phases could transfer millions more acres to be “conveyed upon request by the state or local governments.”

Amodei plans to reintroduce a new version of the bill within 60 days.

“I’m a local control guy, that is kind of the premise of this whole notion,” Amodei said. “If all the (federal government) has to fall back on is, 'We own it and we will do as we damn well please' … I just don’t think that is good.”

Another bill by Rep. Jason Chaffetz, R-Utah, would unload, “3.3 million acres of land identified by the Clinton administration as being suitable for sale to non-federal entities.”

A bill from the previous Congress by Rep. Don Young, R-Alaska, would allow states to select and acquire property from the U.S. Forest Service. And a budget amendment by Sen. Lisa Murkowski, R-Alaska, from last year would have made it easier to transfer federal land to states.

Another bill by Rep. Rob Bishop, R-Utah, changed House rules by dumping the requirement that representatives pushing land transfers account for the cost of their proposals to federal taxpayers.

Even with a Republican Congress and president, the most sweeping bills are likely to encounter the most turbulence.

Ryan Zinke, the Montana congressman whom President Donald Trump nominated for Interior secretary, has been a skeptic when it comes to selling vast swaths of public land, and Trump has sent mixed signals.

In January, 2016, Trump was quoted saying he opposed giving federal land to states. But later in the year Elko rancher Demar Dahl attended a Trump fundraiser at Lake Tahoe and said Trump expressed support for the notion.

Potential costs daunting for state taxpayers

The potential for new land management responsibilities to swamp state budgets has prompted doubts from some Republicans and fiscal conservatives about the wisdom of widespread transfers.

Even the most sweeping program, however, wouldn't transfer all of those costs.

In December, Wyoming Gov. Matt Mead, a Republican, said firefighting costs alone would make a land transfer to the state impractical. And in Utah, the state with the most organized pro-transfer movement, there’s recognition that enacting the broadest versions of federal transfers would be costly.

Nelson, the conservative scholar, reviewed the state’s 732-page report on potential transfers and wrote that costs to state taxpayers could increase $20 million to $80 million annually.

For some, Nelson acknowledged, it might be worth it.

“They want control over this and they would be willing to pay a lot to get it,” he said.

Others say the benefits of transfers would accrue mainly to people who manage to get control of the land for resource extraction or purchase and resale.

Evan Hjerpe, an Idaho-based economist for Conservation Economics Institute, reviewed reports on potential land transfers in Nevada and Idaho and concluded they would cost state taxpayers big bucks. Herpje studied one expansive takeover proposal in Idaho and estimated it would cost the state $1.5 billion over 10 years.

A 2014 study estimated Nevada could reap $56 million to $206 million annually through land transfers but Herpje said the study relied on estimates from states such as New Mexico and Idaho which have more fossil fuel and timber resources. The Nevada study also included revenue from land sales, which are politically unpopular.

And if new land responsibilities put state budgets in a pinch, Hjerpe said there would be pressure to sell the property to private owners who would then reap profit at taxpayer expense.

“That is the oldest grift in the book,” he said. “Any individual, business or entity would love to acquire land without paying for it and then sell it.”